Einstein: a genius, certainly. But would 7G have understood what he was on about? Photograph: Corbis

Who'd make the better physics teacher: An Oxbridge physics graduate with no PGCE or a qualified teacher who went to a less prestigious university? Only one way to decide: f-i-i-i-g-h-t!!! And that's exactly what you're doing on our Mortarboard blog.

Report card

What's going to happen in schools? Gove wants phonics, and dates and mental arithmetic. He also wants teachers to be left alone to make their own decisions. Which of these conflicting desires will win out? Mike Baker walks us through the minefield.

Pitch perfect Joshua Black, 12, has an astonishing aptitude for music. How much has his blindness got to do with his gift?

Quote of the week

Something for all the family at the National Rifle Association annual meeting. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty

Cynthia Dunbar is part of a group of evangelists who have seized control of Texas schools and are busily rewriting history to big up McCarthy, guns and God.

"We as a nation were intended by God to be a light set on a hill to serve as a beacon of hope and Christian charity to a lost and dying world."

What you said

Got no money? Get no education! This is just another nail in the coffin of increased social mobility, which has long since regressed to Victorian levels. I'm thinking Browne should be given a copy of Jude the Obscure…

On the margins

• Yearbooks – often risque and a tiny bit rude – are all the rage in the UK. So why are they dying out in their homeland, the US?

• Can you build a brain in a dish? Ask the scientists who have started to make bacteria work for them.

• The Improbable Researchers have uncovered a salutory tale of what happens when universities can set their own fees, by considering overpriced law schools in Canada